Working Life

Today brings in stark relief the economic chasm in America: the Depression is here, if you measure what real people are going through, but, on Wall Street, the party continues as, in Marie Antoinette style, financial executives reap millions while the rest of the people grasp for crumbs.   Today, David Leonhardt has an excellent […]

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  Even though single-payer, "Medicare for All" is the most effective economic solution to the health care crisis (I’m putting aside the moral question for the sake of this discussion), our political leaders (with the exception of HR676 advocates) and traditional media chattering ideologues do their best to ignore the basic facts. Which is why […]

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   This is the definition of perversion (the dictionary tells us that something perverted is "deviating from what is considered right or acceptable; wrong , improper, etc. or corrupt, wicked, etc."). The real unemployment rate is around 16 percent, millions of people are struggling partly because of the behavior of the people running the financial […]

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www.KatieHalper.com In its response to the events of Honduras, the Obama Administration is acting like a CT (Coup-tease), whose commitment phobia and"joint military operations. " intimacy issues render it paralyzed and unable to engage in a healthy relationship with Latin America. The Administration flirts with the idea that the coup is really a coup, and […]

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   No institution ever gives up power willingly. It has to be taken from it by force–not necessarily armed force, but certainly political force. To wit, the battle over the power of the Federal Reserve Board. Two different takes floated around the business/mainstream media today–both of which miss the point, which I’ll get to down […]

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   If you are relying on the media or politicians to tell you when the "recession" will be over, you have a right to feel confused. One day it’s a story or pronouncement about the "green shoots" sprouting up in the economy, only to have those "green shoots" trampled the next day by gloom-and-doom over […]

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   Regular readers here know that I have been pressing the case to significantly raise the dues paid by the people who have reaped hundreds of billions of dollars in the past decade–an entirely disproportionate haul pocketed by the top one percent of the population. Well, a bit of that idea is starting to creep […]

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The minimum wage is a scandal. It masks poverty. It must be dramatically raised.   On July 24th, the minimum wage will rise to $7.25 an hour. I applaud people who worked hard to pass the three-step hike. The new level will put some extra money in the pockets of millions of Americans and, modestly, […]

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   Ah, things aren’t hard enough for workers–retirement has vanished, unemployment is at double-digits (don’t believe the media focus on the below 10 percent number–if you add in discouraged workers and people who can’t find full-time work, the number if over 16 percent), wages are flat. But, that’s not enough–now employers are complaining they can’t […]

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  One of the ugliest fights for worker justice has taken place in Tar Heel, North Carolina, which is about 80 miles south of Raleigh. For 17 years, thousands of workers, who labor under some pretty brutal conditions in the largest pork processing plant, have sought a modicum of justice and dignity. And they just […]

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